Maamla Legal Hai follows the journey of lawyers at Patparganj District Court during the Delhi Bar Association’s elections. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
V. D. Tyagi, the president of the Patparganj Bar Association, is an artful lawyer who always finds a way to use the law to his advantage, which allows him to win cases and get things done.
As he regularly helps the lawyers at Patparganj District Court, they, in turn, lend him their support whenever he requires assistance.
Tyagi wishes to be the president of the Delhi Bar Association and then go on to become the attorney general, but his rival, Mahinder Phorey, stands in his way.
Tyagi and Phorey both want to contest the elections for the presidency of the Delhi Bar Association and defeating Phorey is not going to be easy.
Tyagi decides to seek a recommendation from a Supreme Court lawyer, J. B. Wadia. For that, he must impress Wadia, and he plans to do so by writing an article on Wadia’s landmark case.
However, none of Tyagi’s team members are capable of writing an article impressive enough to get Wadia’s attention, which is where Ananya Shroff comes into the picture.
Ananya is a Harvard graduate who comes from a family of reputed lawyers. Instead of taking her family’s help, Ananya wishes to establish her practice on her own.
Ananya cannot get a chamber at the Patparganj District Court because she does not have the money needed for it. Moreover, after starting off on the wrong foot with other lawyers, she is given a desk in the parking lot.
When Ananya complains to Tyagi about it, he asks her to prove her worth by writing an article on Wadia’s case, which he later publishes under his own name.
While Ananya gets a desk in the foyer, Tyagi manages to impress Wadia and secures his recommendation, but not without leaving Ananya with a negative impression of him.
Phorey also tries his best to sabotage Tyagi and have his nomination canceled, but Tyagi manages to outsmart Phorey using his knowledge of the law.
Along with Ananya, a lawyer named Sujata also has a desk in the foyer. Sujata does not fight cases because clients are unwilling to pay the appropriate amount to a lawyer without a chamber.
Instead, she passes on the cases she receives to other lawyers who have chambers, earning a commission from them in return.
Initially, Ananya and Sujata did not get along, primarily because Ananya disapproved of Sujata’s practice of illegally referring cases to others.
However, over time, the two women develop a strong friendship. As her senior, Sujata starts guiding and helping Ananya, who aspires to be a legal aid.
Along with Sujata, the court manager, Vishwas, also becomes Ananya’s friend and helps her. Vishwas likes Ananya, but he is aware that she is out of his league, so he is marrying someone else.
Even with Sujata and Vishwas’ help, Ananya has a hard time getting her first case. When she finally gets a case, a lawyers’ strike prevents her from representing her client.
The strike only ends after Judge Ghosh is persuaded to accept the lawyers’ proposed solution, boosting Tyagi’s popularity. However, by the time the strike concludes, it is too late for Ananya to represent her client.
Meanwhile, Sujata realizes that the lawyers she refers her cases to are not compensating her fairly.
Later, when Munshiji, a lawyer everyone respects, advises her to fight her cases on her own in order to get a chamber, Sujata resolves to take on a seemingly simple case.
She is humiliated when she goes to court unprepared, but instead of giving up, she works hard to prepare for the next session and proves that she is a competent lawyer.
To garner more support from lawyers, Tyagi resorts to pressuring a well-known lawyer, Jaitley, to endorse him.
Jaitley is handling a significant land dispute case for a large corporation, and Tyagi unnecessarily drags out the case that Jaitley could have won easily.
A frustrated Jaitley is left with no choice but to do as Tyagi says, which includes asking all the lawyers in his firm to vote for Tyagi.
When Tyagi’s father, Sarveshwar Dayal Tyagi, who is a retired High Court judge, learns about Tyagi’s actions, he pays him a visit.
Tyagi and his father share a strained relationship, as Tyagi’s father did not send him to a private school or use his position to support Tyagi’s career.
Tyagi had to work harder than the children of his father’s colleagues to make a name for himself, which led to him resenting his father’s lack of support.
Concerned about his son’s choices, Tyagi’s father cautions him, fearing that the elections might lead him astray. He gives Tyagi a bracelet that a colleague gifted him.
The bracelet serves as a reminder of his responsibility as a judge every time he delivers a sentence, and he hopes that it will ground his son whenever he makes a choice.
He also tells Tyagi that he never supported him because he wanted Tyagi to be independent and surpass those who rely on their parents’ aid to achieve success.
The meeting with his father does impact Tyagi, prompting him to refrain from breaking any laws during his campaign.
Ending explained:
A clever move
More challenges arise for Tyagi when a confrontation between a policeman and a lawyer escalates into a conflict between the entire police force and all the city’s lawyers.
The dispute shows no signs of resolution, as no lawyer is willing to represent the officer involved in the initial incident.
As tensions escalate, campaigning is banned at Jhilmil Court, Phorey’s stronghold, which means Tyagi and others cannot undermine Phorey’s support.
To make matters worse, Phorey’s subordinate, Prince, will be representing the lawyer, which will boost Phorey’s popularity among lawyers.
Tyagi decides to represent the policeman to defeat Phorey’s faction in court, which leads to all the lawyers turning against Tyagi.
However, in court, when every lawyer is watching him, Tyagi uses the opportunity to campaign to secure votes for himself.
He empathetically addresses the challenges faced by lawyers and conveys his commitment to improving their conditions.
Tyagi’s speech garners him more support than ever before and significantly increases his chances of winning the elections.
A strong opponent
When Tyagi helps Ananya make her client’s dream come true, Ananya realizes that he is not a selfish person as she had initially believed.
She now understands that the lawyers at Patparganj District Court are loyal to Tyagi because he helps them in their time of need.
Ananya then joins Sujata and Vishwas in helping Tyagi with his campaign. They meet a lawyer named Sagarika, who poses a tough competition for Tyagi.
As all attempts to intimidate Sagarika fail, Ananya and Sujata decide to have an honest conversation with her.
Sagarika is aware that she is not going to win, but she is still contesting because she believes that individuals like Tyagi and Phorey prioritize their image over the welfare of lawyers.
She refuses to withdraw her nomination, which disappoints Sujata, as Sujata will not be able to get a chamber if she fails to prove her worth to Tyagi.
However, when Sagarika finds out that Tyagi is representing the policeman in court, she comes to believe that he does care about important issues rather than just his image.
Sagarika then chooses to support him and withdraws her nomination, ensuring that Tyagi will get the vote of female lawyers.
Tyagi’s dilemma
Despite Tyagi and his team’s best efforts, Tyagi narrowly loses to Phorey. Following his defeat, Tyagi is approached by Phorey.
An angry Tyagi ends up slapping Phorey when he taunts Tyagi about his victory. Tyagi’s team also arrives there and ends up getting into a fight with Phorey.
Now that Phorey is the president of the Delhi Bar Association, he can get Tyagi and his team’s licenses canceled for attacking him or even file an FIR and send them to prison.
While Tyagi and his team worry about Phorey’s next move, Tyagi gets a call from D. B. Sikri, who informs him that the Collegium wants to offer him a judgeship.
Tyagi must now decide whether he wants to continue pursuing his dream of becoming the attorney general or become a judge.
Tyagi thinks about turning down the offer, believing that judgeship is unexciting and will tie him down. His resolve solidifies after a conversation with Judge Ghosh.
Tyagi’s choice
On his way to reject the offer, Tyagi runs into Judge Indarveer Rainsla. When she hears about Tyagi’s reasons for rejecting the offer, she takes him to a courtroom.
She directs Tyagi’s attention to the judge’s duties during court proceedings. It is the first time Tyagi realizes how exciting and rewarding the role of a judge can be.
He now understands that a judge’s job is thrilling because a judge gets to answer the prayers of the people.
What concerns Tyagi then is whether a man like him, who has sometimes manipulated and even broken the law to his advantage, can truly be a good judge.
Indarveer assures Tyagi that while he may not be worthy at present, once he takes the oath on the constitution, he will transform and become deserving.
Tyagi then dons the bracelet that his father gifted him and accepts the judgeship. Tyagi lost the election, but he won something much more valuable in return.
A step forward
With time, Ananya learns from the lawyers around her and discovers how to use the law in a clever way to help her clients.
She gets a spot on the prosecution team, led by a lawyer named PP, in a high-profile murder case. However, she still cares about her principles and refuses to do anything that is unjust.
Due to that, she leaves the team when the police and the prosecution plan to fabricate evidence to implicate one of the accused.
Ananya wins the trust of the accused’s mother, who gives Ananya the murder weapon that the police have been searching for.
Ananya’s honesty and her resolve to do the right thing impress PP, who gives Ananya one of his old cases, the case of Kan-Mailiya’s compensation.
PP could never get his client compensation for losing his ancestral home in riots, but he believes Ananya can do it.
Ananya finally gets her first client. She works hard to get him his long-overdue compensation, and her efforts eventually bear fruit.
Meanwhile, now that Tyagi will no longer be a lawyer, he passes on his chamber to Sujata, who will be sharing it with Munshiji. For all her hard work, Sujata ends up receiving the largest chamber.
Tyagi also promotes his interns, Law and Order, to associates and informs Mintu, his friend and right-hand man, that he will be assuming the role of the acting president of the Bar Association.
It is not just Tyagi who takes a step forward in his career; his team, who supported him through thick and thin, also does.
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